Tag: Tokyo

…meanwhile…

(CHART: Bureau of Labor Statistics)

(FRI 8/5/22)

528,000 more jobs in July…That’s about twice the number economists had predicted for last month, NPR reports. The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics says the unemployment rate dropped by 0.1 points, to 3.5% and marks the return of the unemployment rate and nonfarm employment numbers to pre-pandemic, February 2020 levels. Widespread employment gains came in leisure and hospitality, and professional and business services, and health care, BLS reports. 

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China censures Pelosi … The Chinese government has censured House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and her direct family members, over her visit to Taiwan as part of a five-nation diplomatic trip to Asia this week, NPR reports. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has repeatedly noted Pelosi and her delegation have a right to visit the breakaway island nation and accused Beijing of overreacting, and Pelosi told a Tokyo press conference, “They will not isolate Taiwan by preventing us from traveling there.”

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Sinema signs on … The Senate will begin procedural votes today on the $739-billion Schumer-Manchin Inflation Reduction Act, with a Vote-o-Rama of unlimited amendments expected by the middle of next week. Sen. Krysten Sinema’s (D-AZ) crucial vote on the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation (subject to Senate parliamentarian approval) was secured late Thursday when Democratic leaders agreed to tweak the 15% minimum corporate tax by removing accelerated depreciation, according to Politico, and swap out killing the carried interest tax provision in favor of taxing large corporate buybacks, according to our fellow news aggregates at The Recount. 

Upshot: Sitting in the Catbird seat since Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) signed on with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) last week, Sinema could have made these negotiations much worse for her fellow Senate Democrats. But we find the specificity of her demands, particularly restoration of the carried interest tax provision for wealthy hedge fund managers, curious at the very least.

--Todd Lassa

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Fair and Unbalanced

By Stephen Macaulay

So the question is what to watch for on Election Night. Maybe the rather elaborate sets the various outlets have built. Perhaps the branding for Microsoft or Google or whatever else that will be providing data resources. Possibly the dynamic between the “balanced” spokespeople that are sitting at a long table. Conceivably “The Mandalorian” and nothing election-related.

During the 2016 election I was on a business trip in California. Several of us who were in a meeting being held in Monterey, down the street from John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, all met in a hotel room and watched. No one knew the politics of one another at the start of the results rolling in. And as the results came in, not only were there multiple TV sets engaged, but people were checking their phones, tapping at the screens hoping things would update more quickly. At the end, there was no one who didn’t know where the rest stood.

That’s not going to happen again.

In 1990 I was in a hotel room in Tokyo. I had CNN International playing as I was preparing to attend meetings. I’d been there for a few days but was still jet-blurred, the state that follows jet lag. When I left Michigan, James Blanchard was a shoe-in for his third term as governor. When I glanced at the scroll on the bottom of the screen, I saw that John Engler had been elected.

I thought it had to be an error. It wasn’t.

This year? 

Home.

Maybe a book.

Macaulay is a cultural commentator based in Detroit.

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